Raspberry Pi is now manufacturing 70,000 Pi 5s per week, will surge to 90,000 in February
Raspberry Pi is now manufacturing 70,000 Pi 5s per week, will surge to 90,000 in February
There era of Pi shortages is quickly coming to an end.
While it's good that they have been ramping up production, their attitude towards consumers during the shortage is something that some users won't forget, as well as them seemingly ignoring that they are an education charity.
At least the Pi CEO acknowledges this in the CES interview with Jeff Geerling, where he mentions that the company has been "burnt" from a customer perspective. While they do contribute a lot to mobile linux development (indirectly), I think most people here would probably prefer the company just focus on their original mission of getting an affordable, credit card sized computer into users' hands... not scalpers and hardware developers' warehouses.
Also, I personally don't really want to support Broadcom seeing the horrible decisions they've been making recently - why would they buy VMWare, then proceed to drop ALL of their partners, and put a ton of their staff out of work??
VMware, because they are bringing sales in house to make more money. Cutting out the middle man.
The idea is to squeeze as much revenue from the largest 600 clients while they desperately attempt to move to a different virtualization platform: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/30/broadcom_strategy_vmware_customer_impact/
Stop reposting this corporate press release. Fuck the Pi foundation, and frankly, fuck the tech "journalists" and YouTubers who shill and cover for their anti consumer backstabbing.
Not familiar with their anti consumer backstabbing, could you share share some links please?
There were 40,000 PI4s a week produced during Covid, the shortage on the consumer websites was because the entire production was sent to industry users, and there was the barest dribble left over for the hobbyists that made them popular.
Every time there was an increase in production, it all went to shore up backlogs in industrial orders. Why an industry player would use an rPi instead of purpose-built PLCs is beyond me, but that's what was happening.
The rPi foundation will drop hobbyists like a hot potato when the 5s start being specced for industry and we'll be back to the same shit. Pretty sure that's why they didn't bother with H265 hardware licensing, because no industry player will need that.
TL;dr - They're going to fuck you, find another source.
Here's a link to the last comment I made when this press release masquerading as an article was posted a few of days ago:
It’s not about how many they can manufacture, it’s about how many they actually sell to consumers. I have given up trying to buy them. It’s just not worth the hassle.
I always open these threads to find out from the experts what they recommend to replace RPi as established, novice-level mini computers, but sadly I don't see any here yet
From what I've gathered from various sources:
- Orange Pi: Good documentation, but prices of newer models are not as affordable as previously
- Radxa/Rock: Poor hardware support apparently
- Pine64: Amazing hardware variety (phone, smartwatch, IP camera, soldering iron), but documentation can be hit or miss. Check the Pine64 wiki and search around for other documentation by community members
- Khadas: Good documentation, and support directly from the hardware developers, but this comes at a cost
- MilkV: Poor documentation - Ideal if you want to tinker
- Libre Le Potato: Generally hear positive things about their hardware. Hundreds of these were used on a recent YT project in lieu of a Pi with great success, so may be worth a look.
Another thing to check would be Armbian's site - if something is supported by that distro, it might be worth taking a closer look at
A lot of the companies producing these "Pi killers" made them to survive the shortage, because their Pi accessories weren't selling. This means that generally they'll work great with the accessory, but support may be hit or miss outside of that.
I would lean towards Orange Pi personally, mainly due to cost and how long they've been around. Avoid the very early models as there were some overheating issues on a minority of the Allwinner chips - iirc their recent boards are using Rockchip instead.
Edit: add Libre Le Potato
Orangepi, rockchip, Arduino.
There's nothing novice about wanting to learn.
I'm really liking my orange pi 5 Plus. Wasn't able to get the 32GB version, but 16GB is realistically more than I need anyway.
Main bonus for me over RPi is the RAM and storage --- SD, eMMC, and NVME. The dual NICs and extra efficiency cores are a nice perk, too.
My top recommendation is going to be an old desktop PC. Something with an Intel processor that ends with t.
X86 just opens up so many more options over ARM.
However if you want something new, the Zima Blade seems like a good alternative at a similar price point. And even includes 2x SATA ports and a PCIe slot.
If you want to learn embedded systems, the RPi is vastly superior to an old PC because of the variety of hats and the community support around it.
It's not a perfect replacement because of increased cost, but there are plenty of sub $200 mini pc options these days. It's all included unlike the Pi which is still going to need a case, storage, and power supply. I bought one recently that blows away the Pi5 ,and it should because it cost more.
Raxma, Orange, Pine, take your pick.
Unless they drop the price significantly I'll stick with used x86 minis until risc-v is more viable.
Just looked and they're sold out
Try again next week.
Adafruit had pi 5's in stock a couple weeks ago and they didn't sell out instantly. I could have ordered but decided I didn't have an immediate use for it, so it could wait.
Pi Zero 2's as of the same time were fairly easy to find. I don't know about now. Those had been extremely scarce for a while.
Pi 4's are now plentiful. But, Pi 400's (4 with a keyboard more or less) have been fairly easy to get all along.